As Hepworth entered his room at the inn, he was accosted with boisterous familiarity by Mr. Stacy, the New York alderman, who expressed the broadest astonishment at his presence there, and was anxious to know if it would break up his own mission to the castle.
Hepworth reassured him on this point, and gave some additional directions, which the alderman accepted with nods and chuckles of self-sufficiency, that were a little repulsive to the younger and more refined man.
"I understand Matthew Stacy is to be 'A Number One' in the whole business—sole agent of her mother's trust; by-the-way, who was her mother?"
There was a shrewd twinkle in Stacy's eye as he asked this, which Hepworth comprehended and met at once.
"Her mother was the first Lady Hope, the only daughter of Lady Carset, up there at the castle. She died in America while travelling there with her husband, about fifteen years ago."
All this was plain and simple. The alderman drew a deep breath, and the shrewd twinkle went out of his eyes.
"To tell the truth," he said, "I was thinking of that poor murdered lady, Mrs. Hurst. You know there was a little girl at the inquest that would have been about the age of this young lady; for I took a peep into the peerages, after you opened this matter, and I thought possibly that Mrs. Hurst and Lady Hope might be—you understand?"
"What! Identical! Did you mean that?"
"Well, no, not exactly identical—she was respectable enough—but the same person."
"But you forgot, Mr. Stacy, telling me that the young lady who appeared as a singer in the opera that night was that very child."